Tuesday, 14 February 2012

Militant Realism Threat to Fantasy, warns Warsi

Ancient myths are being "sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere", Conservative co-chairwoman Baroness Warsi whined in an article for the Daily Telegraph.

The Muslim peer said Europe needed to become "more confident and more comfortable with its middle eastern fairy tales ".

She will also highlight the issue in a speech at the Vatican later on Tuesday.

"I will be arguing that to create a more divisive society, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their spiritual fantasies," she wrote in the Telegraph.

"In practice this means individuals not accepting reality and nations implementing policies that will allow special privileges to certain religious groups.”

Baroness Warsi, who is Britain's first female Muslim cabinet minister, went on to write: "You cannot and should not extract irrational beliefs from the evolution of our nations any more than you can make the Pope wear a rubber Johnny on his head"

She wrote that examples of a "common sense" taking hold of society could be seen in a number of things - "when people aren’t allowed to discriminate against poofters or when schools are not allowed to teach creation myths as established science; and where magic sky fairies are sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere".

She also compared the intolerance of religion with totalitarian regimes, which she said were "denying people the right to delusions”

Her comments come days after the High Court ruled that a Devon town council had acted unlawfully by allowing councillors to talk to their invisible friends at meetings.

On Baroness Warsi's article and speech, a BBC political correspondent said it was not the first time a senior Conservative had called for a revival of The Dark Ages.

"Last December, Prime Minister David Cameron said the UK was a Christian country and 'should not be afraid to torture heretics and burn witches like we did in the good old days”.

On my last visit to Britain I saw children as young as eight openly engaging in public acts of rationality! The sooner we put a stop to this and return to grovelling mindlessly in front of an imaginary Sky Fairy, the sooner Britain can resume those activities which have made it justly famous.

As it is, any decent Briton who wants to see a heretic burnt alive has to travel as far as the Middle East or Pakistan. Yet there are hundreds in Basingstoke alone! It makes me ashamed to be British.